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ASHLAND — After sweating out the last week, the Southern Oregon men’s basketball team breathed a sigh of relief Thursday when it received an at-large bid to appear in the 64-team NAIA National Championship field.

As the No. 15 seed in the Duer Quadrant of the bracket, the Raiders (20-10 overall) will travel to Oklahoma to face host Langston (29-2), the No. 2 seed in the quadrant and the No. 5 team in the final NAIA coaches’ poll, in Tuesday’s Round of 64. Tipoff is scheduled for 4 p.m. Pacific Time inside Gayles Field House, and it will be followed by a matchup between No. 7 seed Southwestern (Kan.) (25-6) and No. 10 seed Northwestern (Iowa) (20-9).

The winners meet at 5 p.m. Wednesday for the right to advance to the 16-team final site — Municipal Auditorium in Kansas City, Mo., where the remainder of the tournament will play out March 13-18.

The Raiders are one of four Cascade Conference teams in the field. They and Corban, which tied for third in the standings with 15-7 records, were among 27 at-large selections. College of Idaho and Eastern Oregon got in automatically.

SOU is in the tournament for the first time since the NAIA’s two divisions merged into one in 2021. The Raiders are in for the 10th time overall and last appeared in 2020, when the NAIA Division II Tournament was canceled after they advanced to the Round of 16.

They’ll face a Langston team that has pulled off one of the more remarkable turnarounds in NAIA history. After going 1-27 last season, the Lions hired head coach Chris Wright, who led Talladega (Ala.) to last year’s NAIA championship game. The result: a 28-win improvement and Sooner Athletic Conference regular-season and tournament titles with a completely rebuilt roster. The Lions last appeared in the NAIA Tournament in 2018.

Southwestern, ranked No. 22 in the final NAIA coaches’ poll, earned an automatic bid by winning the Kansas Collegiate Athletic Conference Tournament championship after finishing second in the regular season at 19-3. Northwestern received an at-large out of the Great Plains Athletic Conference, where the Raiders took fourth place with a 13-7 record.